Taking Command

As the brigade Deputy Commanding Officer under Colonel Michael Steele for our entire deployment, I thought that Raffi Khatchadourian gave a fair and accurate account of what happened during Operation Iron Triangle (“The Kill Company,” July 6th & 13th). Unfortunately, the discussion became a referendum on the leadership of Colonel Steele. It’s convenient to stereotype him as an old-school warrior tragically tied to past tactics and hostile to new, “softer” counter-insurgency doctrine. The truth is that Colonel Steele was an effective commander, and a far more intelligent and adaptable commander than he appears to be in the article. From the moment we arrived in Iraq, the brigade began improving all “lines of operation” (security, economic development, governance, information, and transition). I recently returned from my second Army tour in Iraq. The tactics that we used effectively in 2006 in Salah ad Din province worked equally well in Baghdad in 2008. Our success in aggressively attacking the insurgents—while training the Iraqi Security Forces to do the same—is the primary reason that today we can transition security to the Iraqis. The convicted soldiers committed their crimes in spite of all their Army training and preparation. Their profoundly bad judgment stands in stark contrast to the hundreds of other Rakkasans who, in thousands of similar situations throughout the twelve-month deployment, behaved with ethics consistent with what we demand of American soldiers.